A blog that explores features, tips and tricks of ADF and JDeveloper

Using the Oracle E-Business Suite SDK for Java on ADF Applications - The AppsDataSource

In my previous post we covered how to create an ADF UI that displays data from the EBS database in read-only form. In this article we will explore how you could use the Oracle E-Business Suite SDK AppsDataSource to enable access to the data from Oracle E-Business Suite to the ADF applications deployed on WLS.

The following sample uses the Oracle E-Business Suite database Vision Demo that is available from the EBS installation media.

Creating the E-Business Suite data source in WLS

The first step that we need to do is to create a data source that will be in charge of connecting the ADF applications with the E-Business suite database schema.

The E-Business Suite team has a Java SDK that has been available for some time now. Among its components are the AppsDataSource and AppsXADataSource which we can be use to enable access to the EBS APPS database schema through a much cleaner approach.

The instructions to access the Oracle E-Business Suite SDK for Java and to set up the AppsDataSource on WLS are well documented on My Oracle Support Knowledge Document 974949.1.

Once you are finished, you will have a new data source defined on WLS.

Setting up the data source on your ADF application and deploying it to WLS

In order to make use of the data source, we need to edit the configuration of the Application Module so instead of using a JDBC URL it uses a the JDBC Data Source in WLS.

Now, before deploying the application to the WLS Server we need to make sure the EAR file doesn’t include direct reference to the project’s DB connection. For that we uncheck the option on the application deployment profile options.

And with that we can deploy and now our application will use AppsDataSource from the EBS SDK for Java to access the DB. This way E-Business Suite administrators don’t need to give away the APPS password to development teams, nor the ADF application have a reference to it.

Hi Divya, it really depends on the kind of requirement that you have from the mobile perspective. It can go from being able to access a web application from your mobile, in which all the business logic stills runs at the server and the mobile is just a a client. Which I think is a nice and clean approach.

Another area is if you would like to have a native application that access E-Business data. In this case you would need to implement strategies for synchronizing/writing/reading the information from/to the application. Most likely this will be implemented using REST webservices.

Also keep in mind that such application ideally should work with E-business suite roles and responsibilities.

Hey Juan - Thanks for this article, Shay forwarded me to you blogs .. below were my original Q's, I see there is new version of EBiz SDK released, was wondering if your post covers the new version, if not what difference would that make to this post & if I can follow the same for EBiz Suite version 11.5.10 ..

Original Q's :
Q - I guess it will appear as repeat, but I am attempting again as I see responses given were in 2010 and hoping there might be better / easier routes now.

We are on Oracle EBS 11.5.10, and approx 1-2 yrs away from R12.2. We have huge practice of OAF and we have been building extension, customizations using OAF from many year. We loved ADF capabilities and want to build new business functions ideally meant for EBS using ADF in place of OAF. Hence below questions -

1. Is it possible now to build standalone ADF Applications hosted on Weblogic to be invoked from EBS Security Model, i.e. Menu >Function based security model. In essence we are expecting ADF standalone application to delegate security to be managed by EBS and once user login to EBS and has access to needed function, on launch of ADF page from there - ADF should not ask user again for Authentication and Authorization.

2. Once the work is done on ADF page, if we can route user back to EBiz Suite Home Page that will be super awesome.

If above are possibility and you can do video or written blog with detailed steps that will be great.

"If I can follow the same for EBiz Suite version 11.5.10 .."
All the described scenarios have been implemented using Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3. They most likely won't work on previous versions.

"1. Is it possible now to build standalone ADF Applications hosted on Weblogic to be invoked from EBS Security Model, i.e. Menu >Function based security model."
Yes, you can do that on EBiz 12.1.3 and using the latest E-Business Suite SDK for Java. The functionality in particular that you need is called Session Management. After OOW, I'll be starting to post infomation on how to implement entries on the blog about this topic.

"2. Once the work is done on ADF page, if we can route user back to EBiz Suite Home Page that will be super awesome."
Yes with Session Management that is possible. Also in 12.1.3 you'd have the ability to embed ADF pages inside OAF.

I highly recommend you stay tuned on this blog. Sara Woodhull and I will deliver a webcast in early Nov. 2012 that will clarify all this questions in more detail. Hopefully you can join the webcast.

Actually I don't know how to retrieve the data from Oracle E-business. Is it same as we retrieving the data from oracle database server or is there any other approach is there, if so please suggest me that.

By reading some documents, I understood that I can retrieve the table data directly from Oracle E-Biz internal database, for that I have implemented a Java standalone application using oracle thin driver, by using this I could able to extract data from Oracle E-biz database. It's fine up to data extraction from tables, but actual problem is I need to download the General ledger, chart of accounts and Cost Center hierarchy information, how can I extract such information from Oracle E-biz, can you help me on this?

Also, in Oracle E-Business I found plenty of suites in iRepository, I have a confusion in finding which one is suitable to fulfill my requirement and where can i get the relevant java libraries/jars.

For your question no. 1) Retrieving data directly from the E-Biz table is not recommended, given that E-Biz handles crossed-functional tables for managing things like language, departments, countries, etc... so unless you know how all the different tables work with each other, then fetching data directly from the tables would be ok.

If you need General ledger and Cost Center information, you should expose it by exposing the pl/sql code and access it through web services. If you want a more java-only code. You need to use the E-Biz SDK4Java. You can find information in this blog about it.

For No 2) If there is not filtering capabilities, then post your question on the E-Biz forum so they can guide you on what suites to work with.

We have the same requirement as this, to get the users and roles from EBS in our ADF Application.
We tried this aproach mentioned, but we are facing "Error 403-Forbidden" error. When we access the url, we get dailog box prompting for ceredentials but throws "Error 403-Forbidden" error when entered correct username/password and prompts to re-enter details if the details are wrong.